The Shadow Girl by Ray Cummings

It seemed a long march. We had aroused a single fort -- a northern outpost of the city. They took us past that; following a crude corduroy road. A noisy, blustering cortege we made in the woods. Some fifty Dutchmen, armed with fowling pieces and swords; carrying torches.

We came to other outposts. Our party augmented. We passed through a long, armed stockade and were in the little city.

It was well toward midnight now. But the city needed no arousing. The houses were all lighted. Crude log houses, most of one story, but some with two. The winding streets, bounded by picket fences and the houses with little gardens and vegetable patches, were thronged with excited Dutchmen. For this was a momentous night. The English were coming. Nichols, emissary of the Duke of York, already had sent his demand that Peter Stuyvesant surrender this little Dutch Empire to English rule. His fleet now had been sighted; it would anchor in the bay tomorrow.

All day, and now far into the night, the little city had been in a turmoil. The streets were littered with groups of jabbering patroons firing up their great pipes and vowing that the thing was dastardly. How dare the English duke demand their surrender! They rushed at us; stared open-mouthed; but our captors fended them off, and vouchsafed nothing.

I seized upon this fellow who spoke English.

"Where are you taking us?"

"To the Governor. He is in Council now."

Down by the Bowling Green, near where the main fort displayed its flag and menaced the bay with its cannon, Peter Stuyvesant sat in the upper story of his home deliberating with his Council upon this crisis. But we never reached there. We went only a block or two from the northern edge of the city. The Dutchmen on the street corners gazed up at their tin weathercocks and prayed for a storm that would blow Nichols's fleet to perdition. They came running out from their gardens to regard us, and jabbered some more. The city was flooded with words this night.

An argument broke out among our captors. We were faced about, taken north again.

"What is it? " I demanded.

"Keep you here," said our interpreter. "The good Peter will come up to see you."

We were taken back. Out beyond the stockade, a little blockhouse stood on a rise of ground. The woods were thick around it.

"Leave you here," the fellow told us. "There is enough trouble in the city tonight. Peter will come up to see you. " He chuckled. "Tomorrow they will bargain with Nichols's emissary at the Bowling Green -- unless, as I hope, the Council decides to have our fort blow up these cursed English ships as soon as they appear. But if there is a bargain, by the gods it is nice to have you English out here secluded in the woods as hostages."

He evidently thought we were strangely dressed, important personages connected with the English invasion. Sent ahead, perhaps, to stir up the Indians in the northern woods. He said something like that; and how could we contradict it?

The log fort was a heavy-set structure. Two rooms in the lower story with an open space like an attic under the peaked roof. We were flung into one of the rooms. Its windows were barred with solid planks. The Dutchmen bound us with lengths of rope and laid us like bundles on the floor.

"Lie there -- keep quiet."

They slammed the oak door upon us. We lay in the darkness. In the next room when most of them departed, we fancied some half a dozen had been left to guard us. We heard their voices; the light from their candles showed through the chinks of the interior log wall.

We whispered to each other. We were worried about Nanette but she was unhurt.

"Yes, all right, Alan. But I'm so frightened."

"At least it's better than being in Turber's hands, Nanette. " If we could escape now, there might still be time to get back to the tower. If not -- well, we might be stranded here to live out our lives in New Amsterdam. But at least, these Dutchmen probably would not murder us.